Cerebral Venom

I’m sensitive to energies and sure, some would call me a freak, weirdo, I’ve even been called a pyscho but I’ve always known who I really was in the back of my mind.

I come from a family of all women, and my mother would constantly say “The women in this family is cursed when it come to men.” She would shake her head, and I’d felt a kind of shame wondering if I’d be the exception to the rule, or curse in other words.

I closed my laptop and glanced out my bedroom window, exhausted from going through all the achingly hideous male profiles on vampirehinge.com, a dating website for unconventional people. I felt pathetic and unwanted, I matched with so many men but few messaged me and when they did, the conversation didn’t last past a day, talk about cowards.

The moon was full with a yellow glow and a melancholy fog circling it, at least the moon deemed me worthy enough to impress me on a night like this. The clock read 11pm and there was no way in hell I was gonna sit here moping on a hot Saturday night. My bedroom had the best view in the whole house and no matter how much one of my older sisters sneered at me every chance she walked past, she’d never get my room, the only weird part? My creepy neighbor who stood in the large window at odd hours of the night parallel to one of my room windows half naked.

I grabbed my shoulder bag and put on my combat boots, fixed my cleavage that hung a bit too low but just the right amount of exposure and took the side steps from my balcony down to the yard. I was mid step at the landing when my neighbor saw me and came walking by with a trash bag in his hand. I seen him watching me from the porch, I swear the weirdo always waited until he seen either my mom or sisters and walked by on purpose just to see us or be seen.

He slowly walked over to me, almost gliding which was so unnerving considering he was at least six foot, his neck was thicker than my thighs, and covered in tattoos. He was a monster of a man but that wasn’t the problem I had with him. His eyes were the creepiest eyes I’ve ever seen in my twenty two years of life and I was into ...weird. I’d never seen a human with snake eyes, literally.

Not metaphorically. Not in a “he’s cold” kind of way.

I mean slit pupils. Glossy green, watching and measuring.

And right now… fixed on me.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, voice low, almost amused.

There was something wrong with the way the air shifted around him. Like it bent, like something unseen coiled just beneath his skin, waiting.

“Yeah,” I said, steady, even though something in my chest tightened. “Out.”

His lips twitched, not quite a smile.

“I’ve been watching you.”

Of course you have.

“I know,” I replied.

That made him pause.

Just for a second.

And in that second, something flickered between us like a thread snapping tight.

My head pulsed.

A pressure, sudden and violent.

Images that weren’t mine slammed into me,

Sand.

Heat.

Something slithering beneath the surface.

Hunger.

I staggered back, gripping the railing.

“What… are you?” I whispered.

His head tilted slowly, curiosity bleeding into something darker. We’ve lived in this neighborhood for almost a year and he’d never came at me this way, watched sure, waved, yeah, but never this close.

“I was hoping you’d tell me that,” he said.

Then he moved.

Too fast.

One second he was standing there, the next, his hand was around my throat.

But it didn’t feel like a hand.

It felt like something wrapping.

Tight. Crushing.

“You called me,” he murmured, his face inches from mine. “Do you know what that means?”

“I didn’t—” I choked.

“You did,” he hissed. His tongue slithered out forked and thick. “Your mind did. Your power did.”

Power.

The word echoed.

And something inside me… answered.

The pressure in my head returned but this time, it didn’t hurt.

It expanded.

Like something waking up, like something that had been waiting.

His grip tightened.

Wrong move Because the moment fear should have taken over it didn’t.

Instead…

I saw him.

Not just his face. Not just his body.

I saw through him.

Layers peeled back his thoughts, his instincts, his hunger raw and writhing like a nest of snakes. His tattoos came alive, vibrant and sinister, coiling around his neck and becoming slithering shadow serpents.

And right at the center…

A weakness.

A fracture.

A mind that wasn’t as solid as he thought.

My lips parted and I smiled.

“You’re in my head,” I whispered.

His expression shifted just slightly.

Confusion hit him, it was too late. I pushed, not with my hands, with my mind.

It hit him like a shockwave.

His body locked instantly muscles seizing, eyes snapping wide as something unseen crushed inward.

He tried to speak But couldn’t.

I stepped closer, even with his hand still frozen around my throat.

Tilting my head, I Studied him.

“You thought you found me,” I said softly. “But you don’t even know what I am.”

I pushed deeper.

Harder.

His thoughts scrambled images twisting, collapsing, looping back on themselves until nothing made sense anymore.

He dropped to his knees, his grip released.

Air flooded my lungs as I stood over him, untouched now, unafraid.

Power hummed through me thick, electric and intoxicating.

He looked up at me, eyes still those same eerie slits but now wide with something new, vibrant green now a dull glow.

Not hunger.

Not curiosity.

Fear.

Good.

I crouched in front of him, brushing my fingers lightly along his jaw.

He flinched.

A monster… flinching how interesting, how delicious.

“How does it feel?” I asked, almost gently. “To not be the predator?”

He tried to move.

His body didn’t listen as I tilted my head, considering him.

Then I let him go, not completely, but just enough.

Enough to leave him broken. Confused. Crawling.

A warning.

I stood, smoothing out my clothes like nothing had happened.

The moon hung high above us, still glowing, still watching.

But now… it felt different.

Like it wasn’t just observing me anymore.

Like it recognized me.

I glanced down at him one last time.

Then turned toward the street.

Toward whatever came next.

Because the truth was…

I was never the girl waiting to be chosen.

Never the one hoping to be wanted.

Never the one cursed.

I smiled to myself as I stepped into the night as his body slowly turn into crumbling stone. Picking a piece of Jade, I raised the stone to the full moon, what a beautiful souvenir he was.

because I had always known what I was.

Even when I pretended not to.

Even when I tried to be something softer, smaller, safer.

But I’ve always known who I really was…in the back of my mind.